Why I Believe Enboarder + SmartRecruiters Will Transform the Candidate-to-Employee Journey

Over the past year, I’ve had countless conversations with CHROs, talent leaders, and people managers about their biggest challenges. A few themes keep coming up again and again: attracting the right talent, getting them productive quickly, and keeping them engaged long enough to make a real impact.

Too often, the problem isn’t hiring itself — it’s what happens after a candidate signs. There’s a drop-off in momentum. Processes become fragmented. HR is bogged down in manual tasks, managers lack structure, and new hires are left with more questions than answers.

That’s why I’m so excited to announce two major steps forward for Enboarder.

First, we’re partnering with SmartRecruiters, now part of SAP, to bridge the gap between recruiting and onboarding. From the moment a candidate accepts an offer in SmartRecruiters, Enboarder will now activate a tailored onboarding experience powered by AI. Instead of handoffs, delays, and confusion, new hires will immediately be guided into a personalized journey — connecting them to the people, resources, and tools they need to be ready for Day 1 and beyond.

Read the full press release here.

Second, we’re unveiling the next evolution of our AI investments. Over the last year, we launched our Intelligent Journey Platform to make it simple for HR teams to build best-practice onboarding workflows in minutes. 

Today, we’re extending that vision with agentic AI — AI that doesn’t just answer questions, but can take action, adapt in real time, and support every stakeholder involved. This is the foundation we’re building Enboarder on: a platform where intelligent agents orchestrate experiences, not just automate tasks.

As part of this strategy, we’re also introducing our new employee-facing AI assistant. Unlike a generic chatbot, it understands where someone is in their onboarding journey, responds with context, and guides them proactively. It can connect employees to the right people and resources, answer their questions in the flow of work, and adapt its guidance based on real-time feedback.

For HR and L&D leaders, our admin-facing AI assistant can now design structured, role-specific enablement programs that scale across the business. At the same time, our AI agents go deeper — automatically generating a personalized 30-60-90 day plan for every new hire. These plans include the top goals to achieve, the people they need to meet, and the knowledge to absorb in their first 90 days. Managers can review and approve the plan, while Enboarder tracks progress, adapts as needed, and reports back on outcomes. Together, this turns onboarding from a checklist into true new hire enablement.

At Enboarder, we’ve always believed that the critical “moments that matter” — onboarding, transitions, and offboarding — have an outsized impact on engagement, productivity, and retention. What excites me most is that with our new partnership and AI capabilities, we’re giving HR and talent leaders the tools to not just manage these moments, but to elevate them into strategic levers for the business.

In other words, we’re helping HR earn more of a seat at the table — not by doing more manual work, but by orchestrating outcomes that CFOs, CEOs, and boards can measure: faster time-to-productivity, lower early attrition, stronger culture, and higher employee lifetime value.

If you’re at the HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas this week, come see us with SmartRecruiters. We’d love to show you how we’re working together to redefine the candidate-to-employee journey, and to give you a first look at our new AI-powered enablement features.

The future of onboarding isn’t paperwork and checklists. It’s enablement, driven by AI, designed for impact. And I couldn’t be more excited to help lead this transformation.